Missing Scene from Musical Mania
by Esmarias
Summary: So... where DID Johnny get all those instruments, hm? One-shot.


**Missing Scene from Musical Mania**

"Mike, I don't know what to say."

"Say that you'll take it off my hands."

"Are you sure about this?"

Engineer Mike Stoker shrugged casually. "Why not? I never play it anymore."

Firefighter/Paramedic John Gage looked down at the black case in his hands. It and its' contents were in extremely good shape; almost like new.

"I can't just take this, Mike," he protested.

"Yes you can," Mike countered, "and you will."

"At least let me pay you for it," John pleaded. He set the case down on the ground and dug into his pocket, searching for his wallet. He wouldn't find it.

Mike held back a smile as his eyes sparkled with mischief. '_How'd I know he'd wanna pay me?_' he wondered silently. He had to remember to give back the wallet sometime today when no-one was looking, otherwise the young paramedic would drive himself - and everyone else - absolutely nuts searching for it. In the meantime, it was hidden safely away where the man wouldn't find it... in Mike's pocket.

"Uh..." Johnny was coming up short. "It's uh, probably in my..." '_No,_' he thought to himself, '_you never leave it in your locker... The squad!_' "It probably fell out in the squad." He turned and started making his way back across the parking lot to the apparatus bay.

"John," Mike called out. John stopped and turned around. Mike motioned for him to come back. Johnny did so, looking extremely puzzled.

Mike stared down at the pavement momentarily and scratched his nose. "Uh, John," he started a little nervously, "how much did THAT cost you?" he pointed to something that could be seen through the backseat window of Johnny's white land rover.

Johnny continued to look puzzled. "Sixty-five dollars; why?"

"Well," Mike carefully considered his words before saying them. He didn't want to hurt his friend's feelings. "It's just that you haven't..." Mike sighed, scuffed his shoe and looked down again.

"I haven't what, Mike?" Johnny pushed, confused with the engineer's behavior.

'_You haven't got the knack for it, maybe?_' thought Mike to himself. "It's just that you haven't exactly proven Chet wrong," he finally said.

"What'd'ya mean?" Johnny asked.

"Well, remember he was teasing you earlier about how you didn't have any musical talent? You're not exactly proving him wrong, here. Not with these antics."

"Well, I'm not _trying_ to prove him wrong!"

Now it was Mike's turn to look confused. "W-wait... what?"

"I'm proving him right." Johnny grinned wickedly. "And it's driving him just as crazy as if I'd proven him wrong. I guess that after awhile, having something is not quite so satisfying as wanting it; at least not in Chet's case. That much has proven certain."

Mike ran a hand over his face. '_Oh. So all that loud, bad practicing in the bay for everyone to hear was for _**Chet's**_ benefit?_'

"And besides," Johnny continued, "I don't want all that I went through to get this," he gestured towards the rover, "to go to waste."

"Huh?" Once again, Mike wasn't following.

John sighed. "It cost me sixty-five dollars _in all_ to get a hold of these things. I _don't_ want it to go to waste!"

"What'd'ya mean, sixty-five dollars 'in all'?"

"Girl at the music store, Danielle; she has _expensive_ taste." He shrugged. "But, they don't call Ryan's Palace five stars for nothing."

Mike opened his mouth, then closed it again, then reopened it, unsure of how to respond. "You..." he finally managed, "you mean that... you took a girl at the store on a couple of dates so that you could _borrow_ some of her instruments?"

"Genius, isn't it?"

Mike shook his head in disbelief. "You're crazy," he finally stated, having thought of nothing else that he could say.

"I know. And I also know that it would hardly be fair for me to accept this permanently, when I was only getting those temporarily." Johnny referred to the guitar at his feet, and the instrument sitting in his rover as well as the previous two instruments that he had borrowed before. "So..." he hefted and held out the instrument for Mike to take back.

Mike took in then blew out a deep breath. "Well," he said, "I mean, like I said, I don't even play it anymore. It's just been sitting on a shelf in my closet, collecting dust. It's about time it had a new home. I mean, even if you don't want to play it, if you just want to display it on your wall, that's fine with me. If you want to give it to a friend who wants to play, that's fine with me. At least it'll be taken care of. So... consider it a gift. One friend to another. Do with it as you please."

John's smile nearly split his face in two. "Ya mean it?" He asked. "You're really giving it to me?"

"On two conditions," Mike held up his fingers for emphasis. "One, that you leave that... thing... in your rover, take it back to what's-her-name,"

"Danielle," Johnny supplied.

"Danielle," Mike corrected himself, "that you take it back to Danielle and if anyone ever asks, you got the guitar from her place."

John gave a firm nod of agreement. That was reasonable.

"And two," Mike waggled his fingers, "that you please, please, _please_ don't ever practice another instrument in the station again. I can't honestly say that I trust this mania of yours to go away and never come back if Chet ever gets your dander up again; got it?"

"Got it."

"It's yours."

Mike smiled as he watched Johnny pick up the guitar case, unlock his rover, then slide the second instrument into his backseat, right next to the borrowed one. The engineer could have sworn that he was watching an overgrown kid at Christmas! '_And I'm Santa Clause.'_

"I might pull it out again later tonight," Johnny was speaking to him. "Tune it up, maybe play some."

Mike's smile quickly turned into a frown. "John-"

"I know, I know," Johnny cut in. "You said not to practice another instrument in the station; I got it. But you never said anything about performing."

"Performing?" '_Oh goody._'

"Yeah. My dad used to play the guitar when I was a kid, out on the res. But he got arthritis early on and couldn't play anymore. I remember listening to him play in the evening, in his chair on the porch. If the mood was right, sometimes the family would get together and we'd dance out in the yard, 'specially on summer nights when the heat had died down a bit. Sometimes the neighbors would come over after a long, hard day's work and dance with us. Those nights, it was pretty crowded. With all the neighbors and us in the little yard space we had, we all barely had any elbow room, let alone enough room for an elbow _swing_!" He chuckled fondly at the memory. Johnny was in another time and place. A faraway look lit his deep brown eyes, as he remembered the good times. "Whenever we went out on cattle drives, or camping trips, dad would bring his guitar and at the end of the day, he'd play some, next to the campfire. Sometimes we'd sing; sometimes we wouldn't." Johnny smiled. "But he always brought his guitar along with him, everywhere he went. It was his good luck charm – and mine, too."

Mike felt a pang of jealousy stab his chest, but he quickly squelched it. He had learned early on that it wasn't a good thing to wish you had someone else's life, because you never knew just how hard that person's life really was.

Then Johnny shrugged, remembering where he was and who he was talking to. "After dad quit playing, I picked it up. He showed me all the chords and fingerings and everything. I wasn't nearly as good as him, but I still enjoyed playing. Most of the time, I'd play his songs, though. They were... comforting. So anyways..." Johnny trailed off.

"We'd better be heading on in," Mike said, after a brief silence. "Cap's gonna start wondering where we are; and I've got a date with a chessboard."

Johnny nodded. "Yeah. Guess so. Hey, and Mike?"

Mike looked up into the paramedic's face. "Yeah?"

Gage's crooked grin made a final appearance as he said, "Thanks again."

Mike shyly averted his eyes downward. "No problem. Anytime."

Johnny turned and walked back into the station with a skip in his step.

Mike continued to stand in the lot, enjoying the light evening evening breeze. Then he looked at Johnny's rover and laughed, "Seriously, Gage; an accordion?" Shaking his head and snickering he wondered out loud, "What were planning to do? Have us all dancing in the apparatus bay to polka music till the klaxons sound?" He laughed even harder at the mental image of Chet dressing up and dancing to the polka. At the fireman's picnic. Mike might've paid sixty-five dollars to see _that_!

With one final chuckle, Mike made his way back into the station as well. As he started to walk into the locker room, he bumped into Captain Stanley.

"Did you get rid of it?" Cap whispered conspiratorially.

"Yep; mission accomplished. It's all been taken care of, Cap."

Hank let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He'd been fairly quiet throughout this whole ordeal, with the exception of the bagpipes, but when he saw the accordion sitting in his crewman's vehicle, that had been the last straw. Of course, he didn't want to hurt John's feelings, so he had pulled rank and told his second-in-command to do it.

"I don't care _how_ you do it, Michael; just _do it_. Understand?" he had ordered his engineer. Mike had nodded his understanding.

"It was fair trade," Mike said now.

Cap paused in his silent, inward celebration and peered suspiciously at Mike through narrowed eyes. "What'd'ya mean '_fair trade_'? What did you trade it for?"

_The promise that he would never do this to the rest of us poor, undeserving fellows ever again,'_Mike thought. But before he could answer, the klaxons began playing their song, calling out the whole station on a run. The squad and engine pulled smoothly out of the bay and raced down the road, their sirens wailing and reds flashing.

Later, Mike found himself on the losing end of a chess game with Marco while Johnny sat playing... er, _performing_, one of his dad's old campfire songs in the day room. Captain Stanley walked in on it and, seeing that the trade hadn't been a disastrous thing after all, sat down to listen. He was surprised to find himself actually enjoying the music that evening. So afterward, instead of tearing his engineer a new one, he let the matter drop. Unable to admit that the performance wasn't half-bad, Chet merely stated that it "beats the bagpipes." And that it did.

FIN


End file.
